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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Reverting back to Blogger Profile

Yesterday I wrote about the option to switch your Blogger Profile over to your Google+ Profile. I found the major disadvantage to this being that when I left a comment on someone else's blog, the comment linked back to my Google+ profile instead of linking directly back to my blog. This kind of defeats the purpose of blogging which is to attract readers. Actually the link from comments was going back to my blogger profile and from there you could click on the link to my blog. This still seems better than going out to Google+, then having to come back to blogger?

The seamless or automatic updating of my Google+ profile with my new blog post did work well. When I clicked the "Publish" button, I was prompted with a dialog box and asked for a description or comment of the blog I was about to post. And it showed me a preview of the blog post (text). What showed up on my Google+ profile was a brief snippet of my most recent post and the comment I had written in the dialog box prior to posting.

Dialog box prior to posting on profile

Previously, manually pasting a link to my most recent blog post would not include a brief snippet of the post, but rather a snippet of the blog itself and was always the same no matter what new post I had written. It always said "I was researching Godwin and related families, etc..." I could probably fix this problem on my own just by removing the text from the header of my blog. I just hadn't gotten around to it. This is what my posts used to look like when I manually posted the links to Google+:

Manually updated link to my blog post

This is what my automatic post looks like on Google+:

Automatically updated blog post

Even though the new automatic posting process includes the post snippet, no where does it say that it comes from my Genealogy By Ginger blog! In fact, this "link" looks just like any other link I've shared on my Google+ Profile. How will people reading my news feed know if this is a post *I* made or if it is one that I shared?

And what about scheduled posts? How do you think Google+ will handle those? I had this post scheduled for Tuesday morning at 9 am. We will see what happens.**Update Tues 9:32 am: This scheduled post did NOT automatically update to Google+. It did, however, automatically update to Facebook!

Summary:
1) When I leave comments on other blogs, readers are directed back to my Google+ page instead of my blog or blog profile, where they have to look for and find my blog address
2) Automatic posting of new blog posts is nice because it gives my most recent post snippet and allows me to write a comment; but it doesn't even say the name of my blog and makes it hard to discern between my blog post and other peoples' posts I've shared; Also, it does not automatically post scheduled posts.
3) I can alleviate the problem of manual posting not adding a snippet by removing text from my header
4) Last, but I'm sure not least, another reader told me that she didn't like that with the switch, the entire contents of the Google+ "Introduction" section of the "About" page were reproduced on her blog(s)' sidebar.

So what do you think? Is this really a choice or do you think we will all be forced to switch over to our Google+ profiles in the near future?

Oh and what if you want to revert back to your blogger profile? You do have 30 days to do so. Here's how you do it. Go to your Blogger dashboard (or whatever you call it). And click on the gear symbol below your name. There should be a link that says "Revert to Blogger Profile." See screenshot below (click on image to make it bigger).

6 comments:

Some interesting thoughts - thanks for doing the heavy lifting for the rest of us. My concern is that many people blog with just their first name or a made up name - how will this affect them and their blog with Google+? I think Google is doing some great things and am happy that there is the ability to share a post easier between Blogger and Google+, but perhaps a bit more noodling till this is good for all bloggers.

Hi Tessa, I like the automatic posting of new blog posts to Google+, but it doesn't even mention the name of my blog when it does that! Plus it doesn't automatically post scheduled posts. So I guess I will just stick to manually updating my Google+ profile with new blog posts and let Facebook keep doing all the heavy lifting for me!

I really appreciate all the effort you have put into figuring this out in explaining it to all of us. After reading your posts I think there are enough downsides that I will not be switching over to google plus profile anytime soon. Thanks again!

About Me

Contact Me: Ginger R. SmithI am an avid genealogist and librarian living in Durham, NC. I do extensive research at the North Carolina State Archives for my Brooks and Godwin families. If you would like assistance locating records at the Archives, please feel free to email me. This blog highlights my research and DNA testing updates. Please check out my Surname Page to see if we have any relatives in common!